Its been a while happy campers, but im back x blogging ready and with a new air of enthusiasm for sharing my little place on this spinning rock! Today i thought i would share my love of seitan. Seitan is a wheat meat that you can make using vital wheat gluten, it can be roasted, fried, boiled, steamed, slowccooked and can be flavoured with a miriade of herbs and spices. I have it around once a week in the house. My most favourite way of cooking it is to make seitan ribz ( original idea and recipe from fat free vegan ), i made a wonderful teriyaki seitan rib last week which was so so lovely it was totally devoured. It always goes down well and for that im over the moon, because its so easy and so filling and versatile. I found an amazing seitan cookbook called 'Cooking with Seitan, by Barbara Jacobs and Leonard Jacobs. There recipe for plain quick homemade seitan is so simple and effective. 2 cups vital wheat gluten flour 1 cup cooled water or seasoned stock 1 cup of plain soya milk 1. Place the flour in a large bowl, and add all the liquid at once. Mix the ingrediants immediately and vigorously with a fork to form a dough. When the dough becomes thick and stiff, knead it with your hands 10-15 times. 2. Let the dough rest for 2-5 mins, then knead it a few more times. Allow the gluten to rest for about 15 minutes. 3. At ths point, the gluten can be cooked, refridgerated or frozen. I personally like to boil up seitan steaks in a special stock, cool them and bag them up for freezing to defrost and use whenever i need to add seitan to the recipe. That bit of extra work makes life so much easier down the line. You can make all knids of exciting meals with it like burgers, sausages, steak pieces, chicken pieces, seitan ribz, seitan mince and create recipes that use a substitute meat product. Go on be brave and have a go at making seitan for yourself, nothing ventured nothing gained i say.